Scientists on the research vessel Akademik Fedorov spent a week or so setting up a network of scientific monitoring equipment up to about 25 miles from the MOSAiC ship.

Ravenna Koenig/NPR

Arctic sea ice is one of the most dramatic indicators of the changing climate. Ice cover on the Arctic Ocean is in some months about half what it was decades ago, and its thickness has shrunk, by some estimates 40%.

Changes in the ice may also mean a host of other changes, in the Arctic system and around the globe. To better understand this, scientists have frozen an icebreaker alongside an Arctic ice floe that they will observe for a whole year.

The project is called MOSAiC, for Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. And the primary questions they’re trying to answer:…